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Showing posts with the label New Testament

REASSIGNED is now available.

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  by Bart Denny After a lot of writing, rewriting, cutting, adding, checking sources, arguing with sentences, and wondering more than once whether this thing would ever actually be finished, I’m happy to say that my new book is now available on Amazon . Reassigned: Military Lessons for Ministry Leadership grew out of a question I’ve been wrestling with for years: What happens to everything the military formed in us when the uniform comes off? For me, the answer became especially important when my own life took an unexpected turn. I spent nearly twenty-two years in the U.S. Navy. I served on submarines and destroyers, commanded two coastal patrol ships, deployed overseas, and eventually finished my military career on a major combatant command staff. Years later, I found myself in seminary and then in pastoral ministry. Those two worlds can feel very far apart. And they are. A church is not a warship. A pastor is not a commanding officer. Church members are not sailors who...

Did John Write the Fourth Gospel? Why the Author Matters More Than You Think

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Apostle John the Theologian on the island of Patmos, by Andrei Mironov, 2012. by Bart L. Denny For nearly two millennia, the Church has affirmed that the Apostle John—the son of Zebedee and beloved disciple of Jesus—wrote the Gospel that bears no name. But in recent centuries, particularly in academic circles, that assumption has faced fierce opposition. Some modern scholars have dismissed John’s authorship, proposing instead a mysterious “John the Elder,” a hypothetical community of Johannine disciples, or even late Gnostic sources. 1 So, does it really matter who wrote the Gospel of John? More than you might think. In this article, I want to make the case that the traditional view—that the Apostle John wrote the Fourth Gospel—is not only historically viable but the most reasonable conclusion when all the evidence is laid out. We'll look at both the internal clues from the Gospel itself and the external witness of early church history. And we’ll see why this...